Karen March Counselling & Therapy Services

KAREN MARCH
M.Soc.Sc.(Counselling),
MACA(Professional)

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What colour glasses do you see the world through?
Part 2

As promised, here is part 2 of last month's blog with some strategies to help you change negative thinking tendencies that are adversely affecting your happiness.

Watch your thoughts, for they become your words.
Watch your words, for they become your actions. .

The first step - mindfulness

Become more mindful of your own thoughts.

Start to think about your own thinking, increasing self-awareness and understanding your own thought processes.

Look for patterns in your thinking and notice if the same thoughts, self-perceptions and conclusions seem to be your natural default when things don't turn out the way you expected.

Notice if any of the cognitive distortions we talked about in the previous month's blog are part of your process and how often they may influence your thinking.

Notice, and perhaps even record how many times you catch yourself thinking &/or talking negatively in a day or a week. You'll probably be surprised at the frequency of your negativity and the evidence will highlight the window of negativity through which you perceiving the world and others around you.

Attend to your Inner Critic

Ascertain whether your negative thoughts are turned against yourself.

A harsh Inner Critic can often go hand-in-hand with a harsh Outer Critic. In other words, the person who is highly critical of themselves will often be applying the same inflexible and unrealistic standards to others.

Give this voice a name of its own. This will help you to separate from it so that you can view it from a distance and see it more realistically.

Don't just accept everything the Inner Critic tells you. Question it. Ask it how it knows this fact to be true. Probe it for evidence for its assumptions. Try repeating aloud to yourself what the Inner Critic says. Talking out loud can often in itself, make a negative assumption sound silly or irrational.

You can also choose to disengage from the Inner Critic, with a simple declaration such as "No. Not now" or "I'm not listening to that. I choose not to take on those negative thoughts".

Make a conscious choice to pay attention to more helpful thoughts. Choosing not to engage with negative thoughts, disempowers them.

Identify your triggers

By using mindfulness to better understand your self-talk, you will see patterns emerging. You may identify particular circumstances, certain people or personal vulnerabilities that often result in negative feelings and thoughts.

Knowing your triggers can mean you are fore-warned and fore-armed so that you can determine to take a positive spin on a situation and be prepared to control negative thinking before it arises.

For example, there may someone in whose presence you often feel inadequate. Before speaking to them the next time, you can determine to view them as someone like yourself, who is trying to establish credibility in the same way you are and that your feelings of inferiority are really coming from your own self-doubt, not because you actually have less potential or worth.

Write yourself positive

As a flow-on from simply writing down the frequencies of your negative thoughts as suggested in from the Mindfulness strategy above, why not explore some positive thoughts that you could have applied. This activity balances your self-perception and gives you a focus on the positive aspects of yourself which you can then use as an alternative focus to negativity.

Mornings are often a good time for this short activity and will start your day on a positive note. When we are feeling negative, we can often wake up feeling pessimistic and downbeat. Remember both positive and negative thinking are habits and we can choose which habit we want to encourage and foster.

Create your own mantra

The concept of personal mantras can sound like pop-psychology and personal affirmations have probably become devalued by the proliferation of self-proclaimed positive thinking gurus who seem to think that a pithy aphorism is all anyone needs to change their life.

A personal mantra however, is just that. It is a truth that you yourself create, that fits with your own ideals, your hopes, your ethics and your personal objectives. It must resonate with you if it is to successfully inform your thinking and change your behaviour.
An example of a mantra could be: "It is enough that I do my best".
However, I must stress that while this mantra may resonate with some, it may not speak to others. Your own words are best.

Give yourself a time limit

If you have noticed that you are engaging in negative rumination or overthinking, rather than fighting with it, give yourself a finite time to consider your thoughts.

For example, you may allow yourself 20 minutes to think of possible scenarios that could go wrong or to ponder on an event that left you feeling negative. At the deadline of 20 minutes, stop thinking and change to another activity. Make a deal with yourself that you will not return to the subject of your rumination for the rest of the day.
In this way, you are permitting yourself to think about the negative thought but you are controlling its ability to consume you and overshadow your entire day.
With practice, you will become quite efficient at using this strategy whenever you need to.

Change your environment

Negativity has a habit of crowding in on us and keeping us stuck. Changing your physical surroundings can have powerful effect on how we feel and the way we think.

While we are not always in a position to travel to new places, we don't need to go far to experience a different environment that can a profound effect on our outlook.

Simply taking a walk in a forest, on a beach or in the countryside, can put our thoughts into perspective. The ability to allow thoughts to drift away has been documented in research as a beneficial by-product of being in nature

Likewise, getting out from the four walls and meeting up with a good friend for coffee, meeting someone randomly on a train and chatting, or engaging in some physical activity such as bike riding or swimming can create some space in our current mindset that gives us respite from negative rumination and allows us to experience an alternative view of the world around us.

Karen March Aldinga Medical Surgery 17 Old Coach Road, Aldinga SA 5173
Mobile: 0409169115 Email: karmar@chariot.net.au

ABN 51440 722 091